In today's competitive marketplace, companies exert great focus and effort in improving leadership, quality, customer satisfaction and other factors that can provide an edge over the competition. One area of focus involves the production planning for a manufacturing line. Conventional production planning for a manufacturing line, including the planning for the input/delivery quantities into/from a plurality of manufacturing areas, is usually made on the basis of past records, e.g., average term of works, average operation rate, average number of lots processed per equipment, etc. However, if a future product mix, supply, demand, component deliver or the like is altered, the existing forecasting is no longer valid and must be reassessed. Therefore, in order to provide an accurate forecast, the planning and updating of all aspects of production is needed.
Manufacturing line resource planning is a tool that is used to resolve scheduling conflicts before they occur. With the right tools, dramatic improvements in productivity are possible. Various methods for making production plans have been conventionally developed, as a production management system. For example, computerized MRP systems give manufacturers tremendous advantages by minimizing inventory and reducing material shortages. In addition to materials management, capacity on the manufacturing line is also important to monitor. Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) helps managers make the right scheduling decisions before problems reach the manufacturing line. By performing capacity planning, over-loading or under-scheduling critical resources may be avoided.
Typically, capacity planning subsystems provide convenient reports to help managers make the right scheduling decision before problems reach the manufacturing line. Capacity planning often considers forecasts, customer orders, and firm planned orders for each time period in the planning horizon. Load details may be accumulated in standard hours and the total loads are compared to each capacity choke-point. Projected surplus or shortfalls provide the basis for taking corrective action.
Capacity planning reports are synchronized with the latest manufacturing resource planning, which helps assure coordination between materials and resources. This enables the identification of potential conflict s in sufficient time to reschedule work orders, manage manpower, select or develop alternate routings, modify subcontracting plans, or take a host of other corrective actions without costly interruptions to work on the manufacturing line.
Input/output planning is used to identify short-term problems. Desired levels of planned input are generated, and reports are generated that highlight variances from the desired levels. Further, historic information allows improved control of manufacturing operations through variance reports of input, output, and queues.
The monitoring of activity control helps handle the details of work order flow. This allows managers to track manufacturing line processes in numerous ways; by monitoring work order movement and managing manufacturing priorities. The cycle time for each step in the production process must be monitored and managed to plan and control manufacturing operations more effectively. Once all operations are scheduled and material has been delivered to the appropriate manufacturing areas, work order and work center status tracking may be performed.
Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is widely recognized as one of the most important management tools a manufacturing management can have. MRP translates management, marketing, and productions planning goals into detailed and coordinated schedules for purchasing and production. MRP is used to translate management, marketing, and production planning goals into detailed and coordinated schedules for purchasing and production. In addition to monitoring all of the above parameters, accurate records of parts on-hand and material flow through the stockroom are valuable to manage inventory availability. Accurate inventory records are crucial to the success of the planning effort.
Thus, the fundamental objective of a manufacturing system is to support the factory's ability to produce a finished product by ensuring the availability of the right material in the right quantity at the right time. Such accurate, complete, and timely information help achieve business objectives more effectively, even as changes occur in markets and production schedules. Knowing how well production continues to match demand, as weeks and months go by, allows management to smooth production, lower costs, shorten lead times and speed shipments.
However, the customer needs completed products that meet their requirements at a hub or warehouse close to the manufacturing site for the pull production. A manufacturer is requested to deliver the completed product to the hub. Nevertheless, the delivery is determined according to supply commitment from the manufacturing. The monitoring processes provide monthly indications of demand and supply commitment processes. However, reporting supply commitment is not reliably communicated timely and/or to the proper responsible party thereby preventing action from being taken when achievement of the commitment is not possible.
In addition, when supply is short against demand, management is directed to chase the shortage. However, reporting is of supply and demand mismatches are not sufficient to adjust manufacturing operations to compensate for such mismatches. Most of demand changes cause management to chase component and set up capacity at manufacturing to resolve the issues. These efforts, i.e., chase and setting up, are not coordinated to allow sharing of the latest status of component parts and capacity. Still further, immediate erosion of demand can cause extra inventory for the manufacturer. To solve the excess manufacturing inventory, an action plan for absorbing the extra inventory must be implemented as soon as the excess is detected.
Accordingly, existing systems do not provide timely analysis of supply increase activities or excess inventory. There is also no consolidation of supply issue factors according to product that would enable appropriate management action to be initiated.
It can be seen then that there is a need for a method, apparatus and program storage device for providing a cascading timeline of manufacturing events leading to completion of a manufactured product.